Miloon Kothari, former UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, former coodinator of the Habitat International Coalition`s Housing and Land Rights Network-South Asia and current visiting scholar at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, has been elected the new president of UPR Info.

Mr. Kothari is a leading voice at national, regional and international forums on human rights, especially economic, social and cultural rights. He served (from 2000-2008) as the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council. Meanwhile, he served as general coordinator of the HIC-HLRN (1999-202) and coordinator of HIC-HLRN South Asia (2002-2012). During his tenure as Special Rapporteur, Mr. Kothari led the process that resulted in the United Nations Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development-based Evictions and Displacement, the current global operational human rights standard on the practice of forced evictions. An architect by training, Mr. Kothari has been particularly active, in recent years, on issues such as women’s rights to land, inheritance, property, housing and globalization, trade liberalization and their impacts on the right to adequate housing and other related rights. Since 2009, Mr. Kothari has contributed significantly, as founding member and convener to the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN (WGHR), an Indiann NGO group particularly active on the UPR and other mechanisms of the UN Human Rights System.

Mr. Kothari will sit as the second president of UPR Info. The Geneva-based organization has explained the He will bring his passion, knowledge and multiple experiences to the organisation and will contribute greatly to its future developments.

Mr. Kothari replaces Bertrand Ramcharan, former Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, who served as president of UPR Info from 2011 to 2014.